McCaffery: Sixers believe season was a Bynum-less fluke

Philadelphia 76ers' Evan Turner, right, looks for help after grabbing a loose ball under pressure from Cleveland Cavaliers' Chris Quinn during the fourth quarter of an NBA basketball game Friday, March 29, 2013, in Cleveland. Philadelphia won 97-87. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

PHILADELPHIA -- Two more home games, seven more road games, a few more practices, a few more questions, and it will be over. The Sixers will have completed Doug Collins' most challenging coaching year. Then what?

"The one thing you have to do," Collins said Monday, "is say, 'OK, if this is a blip in the radar, it's because there were some extenuating circumstances that came about that we didn't have any control over. But we can't put together two years in a row like that.'"

That's the Sixers' position, clear and consistent, and it has been since training camp, when Andrew Bynum stopped playing. They feel they were victimized by Bynum's season-long knee miseries, and by some other injuries, too. They know they'd been in the last two postseasons, and that they are likely to miss a third by only one spot.

They think it was a blip, a bobble ... a maddening clanked free throw of a season. That's why they will wait for mathematical elimination before planning too deeply for what's next, but why they remain optimistic that next spring will be more like the last two than this one.

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"With the Bynum situation, we gave up some terrific assets," said Rod Thorn, the president, the organization's highest-ranking basketball man. "And Andrew hasn't been able to play. So I think we played about as well as we could play otherwise. I think we have done some good things. We had a bad stretch in the year. Obviously we are finishing up here on a pretty high note.

"But we rolled the dice, so to speak, with Bynum. I think if we had Bynum, we'd be a really good team. And with him not being able to play, it's been a tough thing for us."

Bynum is a talented big man, young, able to score. He would have helped but didn't. The Sixers still insist that he couldn't, which is why they encouraged his late-season knee surgery, and why they still consider him a 2013-14 option. Bynum will become a free agent July 1, and is not necessarily any more likely to sign with the Sixers as he is to go bowling. But Thorn was clear: The Sixers have yet to decide whether to try to woo him back.

"We'll have to see what transpires," said Thorn, when asked if the Sixers will make Bynum an offer. "Ownership obviously will have a part in it. The basketball people will make recommendations. And doctors will play a big part in it."

The Sixers, then, will make no determination on re-signing Bynum without approval from their medical staff.

"Oh, for sure," Thorn said. "Oh, yeah. You try to do your due diligence. As Andrew is a free agent, he'll do his due diligence and try to figure out exactly where he'd like to play, or he wouldn't, as the case may be. And from our perspective, we will do our due diligence and try to figure out what we should do."

The Sixers should have a lottery pick, some appealing trade opportunities, and cap space, which they can spend on Bynum, or on something else. If they have any self dignity, it will be on something else. But that makes the onrushing offseason both important and invigorating.

"Hopefully, we can end up on a high note," said Thorn, "so that going into the offseason, players can think, 'Hey, we've got some good players here and ... a couple building blocks, and we can be a lot better.' I think any time things don't go as well as you are hoping they'd go, that you are always anxious about the offseason. Because you have three ways you can try to build. You can build through the draft. You can build by trading. You can build by signing free agents.

"We're going to need to make some good decisions," he added, "about the guys we bring in."

Spend some money, make some trades, make the best out of a lottery pick.

And if that doesn't work, accept that Collins' most challenging season wasn't a blip at all.